


My Childhood Spat Back Out The Monster That You See

by Sherlocked



Category: Vampire: The Requiem, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Based off an actual tabletop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlocked/pseuds/Sherlocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex was an orphan.</p><p>One (late) Friday night after a school event (she’d been there for the community service hours she ‘needed’ to graduate) she’d been Embraced.</p><p>(No one noticed she’d gone till she didn’t turn up for school that Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday...)</p><p>Alex’s sire was a giant Crone Gangrel Carnon named Lucifer, and she was his only childer.</p><p>(Waking up in an apartment above a club with eyes like a goats and bumps on her hairline was weird, but she grinned at her reflection [That she had to concentrate on, but she was ignoring that for the moment].</p><p>(This felt <em>right</em>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to help with backstory and now I am being forced to actually continue writing this by a friend of mine (the Mehket).
> 
> There will probably be a new chapter after every game, if I can, cause college.
> 
> Enjoy, I guess.

Alex was an orphan.

(Her parents were gone, whether they’d abandoned her or died, she was never going to find them.)

She was jostled around the foster system her entire life, going from family to family.

(She never really lasted long, as the families she lived with all thought there was something wrong with her. She didn’t have friends for much the same reason.)

Alex spent all her time absorbing all available knowledge, learning all the information she possibly could.

(One of her foster siblings taught her how to hack before he got sent off to Juvie. She took his mistakes and learned from them. She hasn’t been caught. At this point, it really wouldn’t make a difference if she _was_.)

She’d stayed in NYC, so she’d managed to stay at the same school. It got easier in middle school, as she got a free metrocard so she didn’t have to be escorted, and she started at the school she’d spend the rest of her life at.

(Uniforms in public schools were becoming a thing, apparently, and her foster parents were always happy that they just had to buy a weeks worth of uniforms and the occasional pair of shoes, maybe a shirt that she could wear with the skirts.)

One (late) Friday night after a school event (she’d been there for the community service hours she ‘needed’ to graduate) she’d been Embraced.

(No one noticed she’d gone till she didn’t turn up for school that Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday...)

Alex’s sire was a giant Crone Gangrel Carnon named Lucifer, and she was his only childer.

(Waking up in an apartment above a club with eyes like a goats and bumps on her hairline was weird, but she grinned at her reflection [That she had to concentrate on, but she was ignoring that for the moment].

(This felt _right_.)

And she got smacked around a bit but Lucifer, but she smacked right back.

(One night, he’s pissed because of some Coterie of goddamn neonates and he starts screaming curses at her, and the entire club starts grinning when Alex starts screaming insults right back. 

(Which was amusing, as she’s a 5’7” 17 year old in a uniform dress and he’s a giant with huge horns and a biker outfit.

(And, also, she’d going to get beat the fuck down, of course.

(...Right?

(Because what it _looks_ like is Lucifer is actually arguing with her, and he even looks...amused?

(Well, amused as he ever is.)

Alex honestly expected the backhand a lot earlier than she actually got it, but pushed herself off the floor and turned to glare-

At Lucifer handing her a leather jacket off the wall, the symbol to mark ones initiation into the Carnon.

(And it was musty, and old, and smelled like, at least 3 different people, but it was _hers_ , she’d _earned_ it, it wasn’t given by someone trying to buy her affection, it immediately became her favorite item.)

She was in the room when the Nossie started in on her Dad’s ‘gay, sissie horns’ and knew to get out, and she called him after to let him pretend to not care about her.

(And yes, he was Dad, because it was the story of her life that the evil old vampire who turned her ended up being the her first and best working relationship.)

She was also sitting quietly in the corner of the booth as Lucifer got progressively angrier as his advisors advised him to put her in a coterie to keep everyone happy. When he turned to her to ask her her opinion, she knew she had to say yes.

Because he would- _could_ never order her away, not really, and if he didn’t, it could cause so many problems.

So she agreed, and didn’t look at her father as he tossed the table halfway across the room and finally agreed.

(She could see how happy they were to be rid of her as she was driven across the city, but didn’t know how bad they wanted her gone till they yanked her jacket off- “Lucifer’s orders”- and shoved her down a manhole, and into a Nossie lair.)

Alex pulled herself up and blinked at the giant gun that was shoved in her face, the jittery Mehket, and the two Nossies (one of whom the won who’d mouthed off to Dad, she was pretty sure.). She let herself relax marginally when the gun went down to reveal the vampire behind it,

“She’s not a threat, relax.”

Which showed to be premature when the Mehket blurted out,

“Not a threat? She’s Lucifer’s childer!”

And she was sprayed with crap beer from the Nossie who she was _pretty damn sure_ at this point had been the one to mouth off to her Dad.

“Why are you here?”

“I dunno, he said something about a coterie-”

“ _No._ ” The Mehket and familiar Nossie snapped it out at the same time, and the other Nossie shrugged.

“I dunno, isn’t he more likely _not_ to attack us if his childer is with us?”

Through the bickering and being brought back up topside and asked how she was liking being a vamp, is when Alex realized that this was _that_ coterie, the one that her Dad _despised_.

(And yes, he was still her Dad, ‘cause there was absolutely nothing about what those fucking druids had done that seemed in her dad’s MO. If Dad didn’t want her to have a jacket, he’d have taken it himself.)

She’s taken along when the group go to investigate whatever is going on under their lair (or, half of their lair, the girl apparently lives elsewhere) and is set upon by a hoard of rotting Kind.

(They just make it out.)

She gives out her phone number and limps back to her apartment, 

(The one she woke up in, above a club, that would matter more if she actually needed to sleep)

Showers and bandages her wounds, not quite up to poaching a human form downstairs.

She’ll give then a week or so, and then.

Well.

It depends on what happens.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what Alex looks like, 'cept with horns and goat eyes: http://i1001.photobucket.com/albums/af132/Pyekitty/Screenshot2013-11-12at62925PM_zpsfb61d397.png
> 
> Also, something I'd never thought I'd say:
> 
> "So, basically, for someone who's 17 and walks around in a school uniform with horns and goat eyes, she's pretty hot."

The next time they meet up, Alex is a little late to the party. 

( This is mostly due to a combination of waking up late and surprisingly moral drunk frat boys.)

She meets up with Anders ( the one who'd pointed a gun at her when she first dropped down the hole) when he was on his way to Canal Street.

(She'd apparently missed zombies.) 

Together, they take out a bunch of pesky news vans and put a significant dent in the media coverage.

(She lets him shoot stuff, making sure to stay behind him. She's redone her hair, and now she has bangs that make the headband she poked her horns through look more like she'd bought them at Hot Topic. She's gotten multiple people coming up asking her where she found it, as well as a couple people asking what a little girl like her was doing out so late.

(She's okay with her uniforms, but she could do with some new clothes.)

She notices the lack of communication between the coterie and him, and asks.

"We had a difference of opinion about a job and some money I had floating around."

(Yeah, no. Alex fully realizes that he's an asshole, but he is also the best trained asshole, from what she could tell. She wasn't going to let them kick him out just cause he's an asshole.)

They get back, and all hell breaks loose. 

(They're acting like petty children. Alex has seen actual four year olds act more adult than this. 

(And every single one of them? Are older than she is.)

The other girl, Bri, is introduced to her by the twitchy Mehket, Lilliana, and she asks how Dad took her letter, before mentioning that she had sent Andy to give it.

(She _knew_ she knew him from somewhere.)

The other girls are getting progressively angrier and tempers start running hot till Andy punches her, knocking her to the ground. 

(She'd grin when she sees Bri go to knife him, but her jaw fucking hurts, and that crazy looking guy is pulling out his gun.)

And then the flash-bang goes off. 

(Again, _ow_.)

They all back off and the other girls go back to their apartment, bringing Alex with them.

(Bri apologizes for it smelling like weed, and blames it on the guys, to which Alex rejoins with all the tips and tricks she learned from the foster parents who were stoners, the ones who had to air out the apartment before inspections happened.)

They bond over sires, 

(Bri was turned at a college party, and doesn't know who her sire is or where her old roommate is) 

And family lives from when they were alive,

(After Bri offers her run of her giant closet, she tells Alex about her dad's penchant for belts. Alex tells her about the foster family who hit where it didn't last or could be easily explained away and their _sudden_ and _unfortunate_ bankruptcy, and blushes slightly at Bri's, "I think I love you," and her offer to sculpt something)

And the design for the bike Bri was building for Lucifer. 

(It was already a deep blood red, which was a good start, but Alex suggested an animal skull that had really big horns on it for the front.)

After she borrowed a short dress and vest, Lilliana gives her a new copy of the letter, and Bri wrote a note on the bottom apologizing for Andy.

(Even though Alex was pretty sure that Lucifer didn’t actually tell them to take her jacket, there was a voice in the back of her head that kept telling her that he was getting rid of her like everyone else had.)

She calls Dad and meets him at one of his clubs, handing over the letter while explaining what had happened.

“I’m going to kill that cunt. I’ll take the bike.”

(The way he uses cunt is extremely gender neutral, but Alex assumes he means Andy. He wouldn’t take the bike if he meant Bri.

(Probably.)

“Um...on my way to the coterie, the druids took my jacket, and they said you said to take it. Did you?”

(She tries to ignore the way her stomach clenches.

(She can’t, however, stop the grin that erupts when Dad hands her a new jacket.

(Well, _new_ \- she’s going to have to get it cleaned a couple dozen times, but still. Jacket!)

She goes back to Bri and Lilli and tells them, before they get called off to a job, Bri going back to their apartment.

(The boys look less like they're about to rip each other's throats out. And the cold Nossie who'd given her a beer, Frank, is there.)

There's a giant Carthian named Big Russia outside the strip joint and asks them to figure out what happened.

(It smells like blood and sweat and fear and the people here are utterly destroyed.)

Frank starts looking at the bodies, as does Lilli. 

(But he looks like a ME on a crime show while she's just...staring at them.)

Alex looks up and locks eyes with the security camera.

(She'd seen Lilli's computer, she knows that she's not the only hacker, she just hopes that this doesn't start anything stupid between them.)

She goes into the back and gets into the computer and watches the perpetrator.

(It's so _clean_ \- it's like when you imagine punching someone in your head. It's almost beautiful.)

Frank confirms that the video wasn't doctored, and Alex is confused.

(Until she finds Lilliana being twitchy in the corner muttering, "It wasn't kindred," over and over again.)

Alex is down with getting the fuck out when they're thanked. 

Frank catches her on the way out and asks for help getting rid of CDC records and deleting blogs and shit like that and Alex says sure.

She finds where the records are and gives them, and he brightens.

“Cool! Wanna come? We’re good at sneaking into stuff!”

“Uh, sure.”

Then they get a text from Andy asking them to come back to the boy’s place.

(They have a canouch now- they stuck a couch inside a giant canoe that's hot rod red with pink flames. When she asks, Anders and Frank get really excited about it. It's sort of adorable.)

Andy gives a rousing speech about how the only people we have are each other and how tempers will run hot but we need to work together.

(Which sound awfully Carthian for a Crone.)

Then Anders asks if he's included, and Alex explains to Frank, who's just as confused as she was, what happened, and he agrees that they shouldn't kick him out.

Anders then suggests that everyone shares the story of their Embrace. 

(Anders adds that the last time he shared, the person he shared it with had sex with him.

("It will bring us closer, even though I don't plan on having sex with any of y’all," says Anders.

("Thanks," says Frank, and Alex snorts out a laugh.)

Anders had worked for a corporate security firm that did the army's dirty work, and had been sent out to dispatch with a small village, and was taken out by his group. He was turned sometime late that night.

(Alex goes next and she gets a bunch of eyebrows when she ends with, "And then I was forcibly yanked out because I was too much like my sire.") 

Andy has this spiritual story about his thing being finding things, and how he got lost in the sewers and it was like everything was new.

(Or something like that, Alex kept thinking she heard something in the pipe behind her.) 

Frank goes next, and his is more funny than serious.

"I got a scholarship in track, and I was jogging on a open air track, and there was this guy who was wicked fast, and I asked him how he did it, and he said he'd tell me, but he would have to kill me-"

(This inspires chuckles from everybody.)

"And he took me to one of those- what are those things, you store meat in it-"

(" _Freezer._ ")

"Meat locker?"

"Yeah, that's it! And then I was turned."

(When the crazy Lancea is telling his story about a drug deal gone very bad [honestly, she's not surprised]

(She sees a piece of paper drop out of the air and onto Andy's lap that reads HE'S WATCHING and realizes that she wasn't just hearing things.

(She waits till he looks up and mouths, _There's someone behind me._ )

Lilliana is talking about her creepy stalkery sire who was really prepared for her when Andy pulls out his weapon, and the Lancea pulls his weapon in response. 

Alex lets herself move, shooting up to turn and watch the entrance of the pipes.

(Frank climbs into the pipe after it as Anders described the thing it saw, something with stringy hair and steel claws that wasn't Kindred.

(Again.)

When Franks comes back, Alex surprises herself by offering them a place in her apartment, and they politely turn her down, as Frank apparently doesn't need to sleep and can stand watch.

(When she gets home, she makes her jacket smell less like it went through a garbage truck, easy and mindless.)

They're growing on her.


	3. Chapter 3

The night starts out with the Coterie (except for Frank and Anders, who are working on the CDC thing she found for them) talking about the deficient amount of yuri in the world and how fanfic showed them their weirdest kinks.

(The entire party is ignoring the crazy Lancea calling them Heathens every five seconds.)

They go to the boy’s apartment and make peace with the thing that had been behind Alex, which Lilliana clues them into being a serial killer who made skin suits as they helped the boys buy stuff for their haven.

(Andy sends a group text about how he followed a Kine with fake fangs and corn syrup blood dripping out of the corner of her mouth, and they all meet in Hell’s Kitchen, aka Crone territory.)

They walk in, and the Kindred bouncer nods them all into the Crone Elysium. 

The group disperses, and Alex looks around before joining in on the dancing.

(She sees Lela, who Andy walks up to and starts grinding on, and over there is Woodrow and over _there_ is...)

She walks over to Sheamus, the crazy Lancea, cock blocking Andy.

(She apologizes for Sheamus, and explains that he’s in the coterie she was ‘placed’ in.

(Lela says, “I’m _so sorry_ ,” with genuine regret and pity in her voice, and Alex detects a trend in the making.)

And then Sheamus, who’s supposed to be fully viniculized to a Lancea who told him not not make trouble, decides to ‘rattle the bars’ of the Crone and starts to open his duffle bag, which has twenty something pipe bombs in it, when he’s hoisted up into the air and disappears.

(Alex doesn’t know where he went until Lilliana points him out, being held by his neck in the rafters by a Kindred with horns bigger than her sire’s.)

The Kindred in the club make a hasty exit, and they all leave, only to be intercepted by a Sifu and escorted to a nearby park. 

(They can feel it when the area’s turned into a kill zone.)

Bri, who’d apparently been made responsible for Sheamus, apologizes profusely, and Andy just disavows him.

(She sends a text to Lucifer, explaining what happened.

( _Send piktures_ is her only response.)

The Sifu declares that they are telling the truth, and that Sheamus is being ‘dealt with’ in a way that puts Alex in mind of the Mafia.

(Literally no one wants to talk to them.)

They meet in a bubble tea shop, and Sheamus rolls up still healing and in a wheelchair with an American flag on the back.

(She takes a picture of him mid gesture and sends it to Dad.

( _Damn Americans_ )

There is one job, but it’s to jack a transport that’s from Hell’s Kitchen to the New York Public Library to out of town.

(Apparently, Kindred need _extremely explicit_ invitations from the Prince to even look at the building sideways, and Alex nopes when Andy says something about stopping time at will.)

Bri goes home and Alex goes and gets a job with the Crone, and is put on the protection detail of an object that is being transported from Hell’s Kitchen and out of the city.

(There’s this thing that had goat eyes for a second, and whose neck is much too long, and she shakes her head to clear the conflicting messages her brain is getting and gets in the van with Andy.)

They’re just over the Brooklyn bridge when they get hit, and Alex dives for the floor as everyone else gets out.

(She can hear the fighting, and seriously reconsiders going on this mission. She sends a text to Lilli and asks if she could track her phone and hack the security cameras.)

She tries to sneak out and gets hit low on her spine. She can’t feel her legs.

(She plays dead and heals, because the Kindred aren’t winning.)

Alex lets her eyes go glassy when the sniper looks her and Andy, who’s laying in the gutter.

“What a shame.” He walks over to her, and brushes hair back out of her face as she stares at a crack in the street, watching him in her peripheral.

(She sorta regrets getting clothes from Bri, because first impressions of her went from ‘High School Student’ to ‘Jailbait’.)

“You know what’s even worse?” He leaned in, and Alex can see the scars on the corner of his mouth. “ _I know you’re still alive._ ”

(Alex can feel her impending death, and her next move is pure instinct.)

She pops her claws and swings up at his neck, and misses, badly. He catches her wrist, breaks it, and hits her in the head in just the right way that her eye pops out.

(The paramilitary division that have badges that say ATLAS start moving back, but he waves them back, grinning. Alex knows she’s not winning; he’s playing with her.)

She swipes him across the cheek and gets caught up in his embrace, and she can’t really move, so she goes limp, hoping to get a chance to drive her claws straight through his throat.

(The last thing she remembers is him digging his finger into her last remaining eye.)

(The last thing she remembers is him digging his finger into her last remaining eye.)

(She remembers is him digging his finger into her last remaining eye.)

(Him digging his finger into her last remaining eye.)

(Pain.)

~

_Lilliana gets back from a job half the coterie very carefully didn’t tell Andy or Alex about because it involved knocking over the main Crone drug distribution warehouse. They’d almost been killed by something that wasn’t Kindred wearing a gas mask with a red visor._

_She checks her messages when she returns to her haven with $500,000 and finds that the new girl texted her a while ago._

_She texts Andy instead._

_(He’d run away after forcing one of the paramilitary guys into a simulated Frenzy to distract the crazy guy.)_

_[Hey, the new girl sent me a text a while ago, you know anything about it?]_

_[Yeah, we need to talk.]_

_[I don’t want to go over to your Haven, you can come to mine, as long as you do not. Smoke. Weed.]_

_[It’s way past that.]_

_He comes over and tells her about the massacre, about them taking the artifact, about the crazy guy dragging Stark away by her ankle, her empty eye sockets leaving a trail of blood._

_Lilli calls Alex’s phone, to find that it is no longer in service. She hacks into Alex’s iCloud and realizes that there’s one thing that she really needs to do._

_“Yeah?”_

_“Hi, is this Lucifer?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Hi, this is Lilliana. I’m in your daughter’s coterie, and I was wondering if you’d heard?” Lucifer had started out angry, but he was getting progressively angrier as the conversation continued._

_“No, I didn’t.”_

_“Yeah, um, well, you probably heard about the convoy that left Crone territory today? Well, she was with it, and, um. She was taken by a Kine that knew a disturbing amount about Kindred. Alex fought back, but she was torpored when he took her-” She was cut off by a crunching noise on the other end of the line._

_(The straw that breaks the camel’s back, Lucifer frenzies and destroys his phone in the process.)_

_Andy takes Lilli to the Crone/Lancea court, and Lilli keeps her face calm when Andy presents his opinion to his boss about his suspicions that a few members of his coterie had something to do with the attack on the Crone warehouse the night before, shown by a roommate’s sudden influx of money._

_(Lucifer is raising hell on the other side of the room.)_

(The sniper uses Alex’s torpored body as a dart board.)

_A really old Crone walks in, young looking and pretty and fair with a cross burned into her forehead, surrounded by Crone._

_(The Prince of Albany has arrived.)_

_She zeros in on the woman Andy had been talking to earlier and starts quietly threatening her position and expressing her disappointment, commenting that, “It’s almost as bad as White Plains.”_

_She then turns to Andy and questions him, but Lilli makes a point of not hearing what’s said._

_(They decide that they’re going to get Alex back, preferably before she comes out of torpor._

_(Assuming she wasn’t forced out of it already.)_

_They get Lucifer to lead them to her, 5 Kine from the Carthians, Bethany and Orius from the Crone, and they convince the Ordo that it’ll look less suspicious if they send someone to help with the rescue._

_(They are the ones the coterie originally got the job offer from.)_

_Lucifer leads them to an abandoned meat packing facility, and Lilli groans inwardly, because of course._

(Through the Pain, and there’s nothing but Pain, she hears a voice talking to her. 

(It scares her.)

_They break into the second floor. One of the Kine falls and breaks his ankle, so they leave him to guard the door. Which is welded shut._

_Caroline, the one the Ordo sent, climbs up the wall with her claws._

_(They can faintly hear an alarm. They can also hear it turn off.)_

_Lucifer and the three remaining Kine take the lead, and two get taken out by a claymore._

_They open a door to find a room with glass on the floor. Lucifer tosses the last Kine in, and shuts the doors on it’s screams as it’s chopped into tiny pieces._

_(The guard they’d left at the door quietly dies on the radio.)_

_They move on and open a meat locker full of human sized bags hanging on meat hooks._

_Andy goes to cut one down and gets shot._

_(The room is illuminated by a strobe light, and it’s really hard to concentrate, let alone see.)_

_Lilli takes a shot at the light and cracks it. She goes to shoot again and gets shot in the head._

_(She heals and shoots again, taking it out just as he runs.)_

_They follow him, breaking up the group into an even 3/3 to cover both doors to a room._

_(They run through a room that’s nicely made up with a honest-to-god Geisha Kine in the middle of the room. Lilli almost stops for her, but Andy tells her to just come back for her.)_

_They burst through the second door and see the rest of the group running out after the sniper._

_(Andy jumps. Lucifer jumps. Lilli gets stabbed through the stomach._

_(“You couldn’t have stopped for two seconds?”)_

_Lilli pulls away and falls to the floor, and cracks approximately all her ribs landing on her back._

_(Over the radio, a voice comes on that unnerves._

_(“You people got me all wrong.”)_

_“Why are you in my Haven?”_

_“You have a member of my coterie, we just want her back.”_

_“You’ll have to talk to him, then.” The geisha looks amused. “He does so love his playthings.”_

_“Then will kill you both.”_

_(If she could hit Andy from where she is, she totally would.)_

_“This is you winning,” She says with an eyebrow raised. “Anyway, it’s not my decision. Not that I mind her here, of course, she saves me having to cut my wrists once a month.”_

_(Lilliana can feel Lucifer getting angry from across the room. She downs a blood pack.)_

_“Can we please just get him to slow down so we can negotiate?”_

_“Because he’s stupid enough to slow down so you can get close to him with your gun? No. She’s probably strapped with C4 so this negotiation will go more smoothly.”_

_Lucifer tosses an axe at her, and she catches it._

_(Suddenly, it’s painfully obvious that she’s a Kindred.)_

_“Either we leave on a plane tomorrow with your friend or we kill you all.”_

_Lilli shoots, which makes her mad._

_(She tosses the axe back to Lucifer, who takes it to the head. Andy pulls it out and throws it again, clipping her, before running off after the ghoul, because now it’s obvious who the sniper is.)_

_“You’re making negotiations really hard. I’m trying nice, and you’re throwing shit at my regent.”_

_(Alex is tied to a chair with razor wire and duct tape, barely recognizable. She has pipes stuck in her veins, as well as multiple sharp objects stuck in various other parts of her.)_

_“If you even think of moving, I’ll blow the room up. What do you have to offer me?”_

_“Wanna fuck?”_

_(Lilli raises an eyebrow at Andy. Alrighty then.)_

_“I like you, I don’t get that answer a lot. We’re going now, but keep going while I consider.”_

_“You wanna see things with ghosts?”_

_“Did you just ask if I wanted to go see a dead body?”_

_“No, actual ghosts.”_

_“I like you, you’re out of the box.”_

_“I can tell you what happens when you’re done with your...work? Or, what do you call it?”_

_“Art.”_

_(Andy and Lilli exchange glances.)_

_“They paint on canvases, I do masterpieces.”_

_“I could tell you what the people in your meat locker think.”_

_“That’s new, that’s novelty, that buys you time.”_

_(Lilli can hear the sound of a car door slamming shut.)_

_“Anything else?”_

_“I’m also a classical guitarist.”Lilliana rolls her eyes._

_“Don’t you wanna know how traumatized they were?” She looks up at the camera facing her._

_“Oh, I know.”_

_“No, it’s about what they say. It’s like seeing your art from a whole other perspective. Seeing your painting from the canvas’ point of view.”_

_(He eventually gives her up for two rats worth of both their vitae.)_

_They cut her out and pull multiple sharp implements from her body, butting the C4 out from underneath her skin._

_(Lilli’s happy there aren’t any Kine left, or they’d be throwing up.)_

_Lucifer gives Alex a very little of his own blood and wraps her up in one of the rugs from the Geisha’s room, carrying her out._

_The Crone nurse her back to health._

_(They feed her before she wakes up, because she is a Gangrel, and waking up on empty leads to her eating the closest thing.)_

Alex shoots straight up with a gasp, quickly followed by a string of curses that leaves Lucifer looking slightly proud.

(Lilli looks about to touch her when she asks if she wants to know what happens, and she can her new aversion to being touched.

(She thinks it’s fitting after spending God knows how long having the feeling of her eyes ripped out over and over.)

When her coterie leave the room, she asks Lucifer to teach her Cruac. He agrees.

(He gives her another jacket.)

She gets dolled up for Lilli’s Invictus/Carthian party, because she needs to feel pretty.

(And in a short, strapless dress and heels, she’s gorgeous.)

Andy gets really drunk on Patrone, and Alex tries really hard not to start laughing, or she won’t stop.

There’s even some Invictus that Lilli is talking to who says, just as Alex walks past, who says, “Oh, I often think of your coterie servicing me,” and it’s so laden with sex that Alex stops, looks her up and down, makes eye contact, and nods approvingly before walking off.

(Alex is _really_ not a virgin. That’s the nice thing about foster siblings; you’re not actually related to them.)

Andy leaves, extremely drunk, while Alex is flirting with some Carthian with the title of Sir who, as she got flirtier, got more polite.

(She turns around and the Invictus Lilli had been talking to before comes up and introduces herself as Devi. She rounds out her night with Devi fucking her into the mattress of Devi’s flat above Devi’s club. She feels better.)

Right before she passes out for the day, Alex hazily wonders what’s going to happen when the rest of the coterie gets caught up.


	4. Chapter 4

In the middle of about the third consecutive day of sex, they take a quick break for food and for Devi to do business.

(Alex goes and takes a shower, vaguely registering Devi’s numerous ghouls restocking lube and wiping down surfaces as she collapses on the freshly made bed.)

She lifts her head out of her pillow and watches Devi walk in.

“So, while your status in my club remains mostly unchanged, I probably should inform you that the rest your coterie is currently banned from my club and is not allowed to eat here for the foreseeable future.”

(She really doesn’t want to ask, but its like a train wreck; you just can’t look away...)

“Why?”

“They are currently in the middle of some...political issues.” 

“Oh. My god.” 

(She buried her face into her pillow, momentarily wishing she hadn’t been turned so she could just kill herself.)

After a moment Alex looked up.

“Can I borrow a phone, please?” Devi sighed.

“#16? Give her your phone.” A ghoul walked over and handed her a really old phone. “You might want to get that replaced before someone sees you with it.”

(Alex smiles distractedly, but she’s not really listening to Devi, more intent on staying calm and trying to remember Lilliana’s phone number.)

[ _~What the fuck happened?!?!?  
~This is Alex, btw._]

[ _~Truthfully?  
~Job gone wrong  
~Crone drugs blown up  
~Not our fault  
~Weird creepy red eyed guys fault  
~Crone blame Lancea  
~Lancea chill w/ that, wanna start a war  
~And now there’s war.  
~Oh, and Sheamus,  
~Lots of Sheamus._]

(Alex put down the phone and screamed into the pillow, grateful that Devi had left again.)

[ _~Oh, and I got you a Sorry-you-were-forced-into-this-coterie thing.  
~It’s going to your apartment_]

[ _~Okay, could you send it to Devi’s club? I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to leave._ ]

[ _~IT’S GOT, LIKE, THREE INCHES ON A SODA CAN, DO YOU REALLY WANT ME TO SEND IT TO_ DEVI’S _CLUB?!?!?_ ]

(Alex is confused for all of three seconds until her brain helpfully provides memories of Lilli having a conversation with a Malkavian who was making interesting hand gestures and, just after, a couple Mekhet around the room looking at her and snickering.

( _Oh._ )

[ _~Let’s put it this way; been there, done that, got the t-shirt, it’s on the floor somewhere covered in various bodily fluids._ ]

(A couple hours later a ghoul comes in with a couple packages for her. She takes the one from the Apple store.

(“What’s this?” Alex glanced up, barely registering Devi’s amused expression because phone? PHONE!!!

(“I don’t remember, Lilli said there was some stuff going to my apartment that she redirected, it’s a present. You can open it, if you want.”

(“Sure.” 

(Alex turned her attention back to her shiny new phone, plugging it into the wall and rebooting it from the cloud.

(“She still isn’t allowed in my club, of course, but I do like that girl.” Alex gently put her phone down on the bedside table before rolling over.

(“Why- _oh._ ”)

[ _~Thanks for the diuhgrgbvx_ ]


	5. Chapter 5

The next night, Devi brings Alex out with her to a Carthian party.

(She’s wearing the same outfit that she left the Invictus in, with the addition of a collar, with roses and spikes and a pentagram pendant on the ring.)

The rest of the coterie is there, and Sheamus has a little group of Lancea surrounding him.

(Lilliana asks how Alex liked the phone, she said she appreciated it. Lilliana asks Devi how she liked the other gift. Devi smirks.

(“It’s the second biggest one I own. The other is only used in times of war.”)

The lights flicker, and the entire room turns their backs away from the door when Godslayers walk in, making straight for a Lancea who’d been fighting for peace.

(Sheamus gets between them, briefly. He gets distracted by something shiny.)

Anders gets between them, and doesn’t move when threatened.

(His body locks up and he collapses, and Alex gets the idea that they’re trying not to kill him.)

This time, the Godslayers almost get to her when a group of Crone go and head them off.

The head Godslayer snaps one of their necks.

It turns into a free-for-all.

(Bri runs over, and they carefully make their way around the brawl. They both look at Anders, who’s quietly seizing on the floor, and then look at each other.)

Alex and Bri run in and grab Anders, who is now barely a couple feet out of the brawl, under the arms and drag him out of the room.

(Lilliana gets his weapons from the coat check and follows them down stairs.)

They prop Anders against the wall, while Lilliana calls to ask if they needed help with the cover up. 

She hangs up and announces that the Praxus are coming just after Anders’ girlfriend rolls up with a bag of weapons.

(Lilli texts Anders, and Alex texts Lucifer. No one even considers texting Sheamus.)

It’s taking too long for people to leave, so Alex hands Bri her heels and runs upstairs.

“DAD, PRAXUS, GO.” She sees them leave as fast as possible as she turns and runs down the stairs.

(Lucifer is a good criminal. He knows when to get out of a bad situation.)

As she comes down the stairs, the door swings open and she’s shot. She blinks her eyes open to look down the sights of a gun. The man holding it sniffs.

“No.”

They group goes up the stairs, followed by Anders.

(Alex spares a second to wonder why this shit always happens to her.)

She heals and goes back outside, meeting up with Bri and Lilliana, taking her heels back from Bri with a thanks.

“We should probably go now.”

“I sorta wanna wait for Fisher.”

(They go to Starbucks, where there’s an overly perky DJ playing her iPod and some depressed guy behind the counter.)

“Hi.” Alex looks over at a man who, for someone who looks fully human, puts people in mind of a fish.

“Hi. You’re Fisher?”

“I’m Fisher.”

Fisher calls in a favor that the coterie apparently owes him.

(Alex is tempted to point out that she wasn’t part of the coterie when that happened, but doesn’t.)

Apparently the Crone are trying to wake something deep in the sewers.

(Alex is internally noping all over the place before he even finishes the word sewers. It only gets worse when she hears that it’s Amara.

(Amara, the Watcher in the Deep, has watched America’s coastlines for a very long time.)

Anders comes in with a knife buried in his shoulder.

(“Never leave a Spanish woman unsatisfied.” Lilliana nods in agreement.)

There is a debate on whether or not to bring Sheamus, and it turns out to be a yes, even though the first thing that happens when he walks through the door is that Anders picks him up by his collar and drags him into the bathroom.

(They all get a text:

([ _Amara is Fisher’s sire. No one fucking tell Sheamus._ ])

Fisher draws an extremely confusing map to get to where Amara should be, and they go out to get ready.

(There are reports that the Crone are attacking churches, and the Lancea are responding in kind. When she gets back to her apartment to get ready for the next day, she texts Lucifer to make sure he’s alright. He is not amused.

([ _The fuckers killed almost all my coterie! First at a fucking peace conference, and then someone hit them in a church with a RPG!_ ]

(She stares at the last part and desperately tries to stay calm around the rage is burning a mental fire around motherfucking Sheamus, even though she has no proof. However.)

Alex spends the night with Lucifer working out his rage and comforting him.

They work on her fighting techniques. She gets tossed around the room a couple times. They end up spending the morning passed out of the floor mid grapple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering about Alex's collar: http://www.etsy.com/listing/160550180/spiked-collar-obedient-princess?ref=shop_home_active


	6. Chapter 6

After spending the night with her dad, she goes to visit Bri to check on Lucifer’s bike. 

(Anders and Andy escort her into Lancea territory.)

They get across the street from their apartment when it starts feeling weird, Andy just twirling around on the ball of his foot and walking away.

(Alex and Anders look at each other and Anders takes point as they move inside.)

They walk in, and Alex sees the clean entry through the hole in the window and the pile of ash with the wet handprint in it.

(Alex had suspected that Bri and Fisher’d liked each other.)

Anders snaps Alex out of her daze and they go to the laundromat on the ground floor, and Anders goes to talk to the lone man there-

(Alex makes a beeline for the back room, because there must be something on the security camera-)

“Yeah, you gotta watch out for the sifu.”

(Alex practically gets whiplash looking back at the guy- 

(He smells kine-)

“What do you know about sifu?” Alex glanced at Anders as she walked back, because he sounded worried, and he’s _Anders_.

(Dave, as he introduces himself, knows about it through his boss.)

“C’mon, Alex, lets get out of here.” She goes to follow Anders, when Dave calls after her.

“Wait, _Alex?_ ” She turned back. “No, you’re not Alex.”

“Yeah, I am. At least, I’m _a_ Alex.”

“Nah, you’re not, not yet.”

(At this point Anders takes her arm and drags her bodily from the building and into a cab, where he hyperventilates for at least the first 10 minutes of the ride while avoiding her questions.)

They meet with a slightly smelly Lilliana and get into minor banter with a visiting seneschal before migrating to the bar.

(Alex enjoys the fact that she can now order alcohol. She orders a whiskey, neat, and the vamp that’d already been there looks her over and say, “cute,” and she really doesn’t try to decide whether he means her or her drink choices. Anders buys a girl from the guy at the bar. It’s awkward to the extent that Alex literally laughs her way onto the floor.)

They wander back to the sewers to coordinate their attack on Fisher’s sire, and Alex meets the new girl.

“Nina.”

“Alex, nice to meet you. You new to the city?”

“Yeah, I don’t even have a place to stay yet. Frank said I could stay here, but I rather not.”

“For obvious reasons. You could come and stay with me. I have a couch or, and I’m not even trying to perv on you, you could share with me.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“It’s cool.”

(Frank demonstrates to the chick in Sheamus’ mini coterie about the serial killer with the claws in the pipes. When the chick tries to comfort herself by going, “But he can’t go after Kindred, right, they’d dust,” Alex makes the effort to look innocent and helpful when she answers;

(“Nah, not really. As long as he kept the vamp alive, he can skin them, wait for them to bloodheal, and then do it again. And, at worst, the vamp would only come out of it fucked in the head.” She blinks her eyes wide when some of the room turns and stares. “What?”)

Anders goes around the group and assesses everyone’s skills, and Alex is stuck in recon with the girl in Sheamus’ coterie and Frank just because she was heightened senses.

(They take point as the walk in, and Alex grabs Frank’s elbow in the dark. He’s fucking freezing.)

They get to a part of the wall that seems different, and Alex kicks down the hollow brick wall to expose a passage way.

(Even with her sight enhanced, she can barely make out the carvings on the wall: but can see them going from looking like the twenties to what the twenties thought the 2000s looked like, haloed in what looked like a tsunami wave.)

They walk into a circular room with weird carvings that look like people, whos veins start glowing red as they walk in.

“I got this.”

“Frank-” Alex flailed after him after he disentangled himself from her and zoomed forward. He hit one, and dodged back with a whoosh when the statue came to life, swiping after him.

(Anders moved to the front and goes, “Frank, get Alex to the back.” Frank instead goes into fighting position, and Alex carefully backed up on her own, cursing the male ego in her head. She stays there through the fight, listening for people coming.)

When they move on, they get to a giant Cthulhu statue and the sound of chanting.

(Alex stayed behind until she heard the unmistakable sounds of things going to shit.)

She walked in to see a large, tall, domed room, the center of which had four platforms, three of which were now destroyed, over a ball of what looked like blood. 

She also sees Frank being attacked by a big guy, who’s holding him off the ground with one hand.

(As she starts running, she’s wondering what the fuck she’s supposed to do, her fingers morphing into claws.)

She flails at him, managing to take a sizable chunk out of his attacker’s neck before he backhanded her away.

(Alex gives that backhand a 2. 

(C’mon, people, Lucifer’s her sire, it isn’t like she’s not used to this shit)

She goes to get back up when the room goes silent, and the ball of blood drops. All the other Crone prostrate themselves as their facial orifices start to bleed.

(She grabs Frank from where he fell when the dude she’d torn a hole in dropped him and pulls him back towards the door, where the rest of the coterie seems to have congregated.)

As the Crone comes up, Anders shoots, aiming for the face, where Amara seems to be invested in covering.

When the veil falls away, Lilliana and two thirds of Sheamus’s coterie run away. 

(Alex isn’t even sure what she saw.)

Anders pulls out his gun, Sheamus pulls out a RPG, and Alex flexes her claws.

(There’s an air about it that makes it obvious that this is sort of a last stand.)

A tentacle whips out and takes out a chunk of what used to be Alex’s hip, and Alex buries her claws into the bitch’s tentacle, letting it carry her around.

Anders stabbed a flare into her heart, Andy attempts Cruac, and Sheamus force feeds her the warhead.

And then the water all crashes in and everything goes back.

~

Alex wakes up to the Coney Island skyline and pushes herself up, looking around to see Anders to her right, Sheamus to her left, and Fisher and Sheamus’ third coterie member above their head.

(Her phone is fucked right to hell, hopefully it’s under warranty. Her hip feels like it’s festering, and half of her face feels like it was torn straight off.)

When the dude’s phone gets passed her she calls the first number she remembers that isn’t Bri’s.

“Lilliana?”

“Alex? Holy fuck. You’re alive?”

“Yeah, me and Anders and Sheamus survived, no clue about Andy. What about Frank and Nina?”

“They’re fine.”

“Cool.”

(Fisher offers her a cab to Hell’s Kitchen, and Andy appears out of fucking nowhere. The Crone say they can’t heal it, that it’ll take a while, but it’ll heal on it’s own. 

(She gets a scarf for her face and a cane for her leg.

(Alex picks up Nina from the sewers, stops by Apple store and cashes in on the warranty before going back to the apartment and collapsing.

(Halfway through the night, Nina comes in and curls up next to her.)

The next morning, even the Disney Channel has coverage of the bombings around the city.

She gets a call from Sheamus telling her that he doesn’t want to kill Lucifer, he only wants to fight him.

“I would appreciate it if you told him that.”

“Sure.”

She calls dad next, and leads off with that. Five minutes later, when he stops laughing;

“Are the bombings part of the war?”

“Yeah. You might wanna get out of the city for a while.”

(She brings Nina with her on the van to Albany with Andy and one of his friends.)

They stay in Albany for three days until they get a recall text:

_[Prince calls Truce. All fighters from this point on with be executed.]_

(Her face is still scarred, but not as badly, and she doesn’t need the cane as much, but Nina helps her around.)

When they get back to the city, they meet up with Anders, who has orders to go talk to Cruz in the Flatiron District.

They walk in on him tending to a kine.

“The Prince has a question, the question is what the fuck.”

(Anders’ girl looks healthy.)

Apparently, werewolves attacked the Bronx Zoo.

(They get into a conversation about bloodlines.

(“Bloodlines are kinda evident.” Alex raised an eyebrow over one yellow goat eye, pointing at the horns protruding from her forehead.

(“Yeah, I get that a lot.”)

As they leave, Alex looped an arm through Nina’s.

“Welcome to the coterie. This happens _all the fucking time._ ”


End file.
